


einherjar

by eleutheria_has_won



Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/F, Genderbend, Gregor isn't actually named Gregor, In a valkyrie au, VIKINGS AU, Valkyries, Violence, because reasons, but it should be obvious enough, this is not the person you were expecting to be the valkyrie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 09:29:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3322409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleutheria_has_won/pseuds/eleutheria_has_won
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re hopeless, you know that?” Gridgeirr snapped, stamping her foot and rolling her eyes dramatically.<br/>“And I always will be,” Luxa replied.</p>
<p>[[prompt: Person A is a fallen warrior, and Person B is a Valkyrie. Person A refuses to die. They meet again several times as a result of near death experiences.  ]]</p>
            </blockquote>





	einherjar

“You’re hopeless, you know that?” Gridgeirr snapped, stamping her foot and rolling her eyes dramatically.

“And I always will be,” Luxa replied.

 

The Englishmen fought well, for Englishmen. Luxa slashed and cut, stabbed and cut, always grinning madly when the Englishmen saw her face and her breasts and her hips and paused, gaping, just long enough for her to run them through. When her spear shattered, she blocked an axe strike with her shield hard enough that she felt a bone in her wrist break and the axe blade got stuck, then punched its former wielder in the face and yanked the axe out for her own use. She kept fighting. Luxa Judithdottir was the heir to the throne of her small, vicious tribe, after all - and she could hardly be the queen of a warrior race with several loud and vociferous naysayers as to the idea of a daughter inheriting if she couldn’t prove herself and fight. And for all her bloody excellence, she had so much more proving to do.

Which was why, when the enemy lance snickered in between her ribs, out the other side, and a gorgeous dark-skinned woman with an unearthly glow appeared, Luxa - who knew her myths, thank you - said, “No,” and kept right on fighting.

“No?” the valkyrie said, perplexed and somewhat incredulous. “Is that - are you - were you talking to _me?_ ”

“Indeed,” Luxa panted, feinting and lunging until she brought down the Englishman who had stabbed her with a wailing cry. Wiping her brow of sweat and blood, she turned a baleful eye on the deep brown-skinned spirit and her wings and spear.

“You’re two seconds from _dead_ , I’m here to take you to Valhalla, and you’re just saying no,” the valkyrie said flatly. “Either we have done a really poor job of selling Paradise or I’d say there’s a problem here. On your right.”

Another Englishman came hurtling forward, eyes rimmed in white like terrified cattle. “I’m not going to die,” Luxa said firmly, sidestepping the charge and belting him across the head with her shield as he went past; she winced as she remembered the broken bone in her wrist, which grated. “I’m too busy making those old -” she dodged and slashed him across the face with her pilfered axe, taking some of it off in the bargain, “- coots, with their idiot male _traditions_ -” a smack with the axe handle and his arm made a snapping sound, “ -and their bloody stupid _reservations_ -” a strike to them neck, another Englishman down, and one more point in her favor. “- _eat_ ,” Luxa finished, gasping. “Their damned words.”

“Yes, I can see you’re very busy,” the valkyrie said dryly, side-eying her. Then she shrugged. “Well, it’s not like I’m in any hurry or anything, I can afford to wait.”

“You’ll be waiting a long time,” Luxa said grimly, gritting her teeth against the slippery red stain all down her left side.

The valkyrie snorted. “I bet you a drink in the Hall of the Slain you’ll be dead inside an hour,” she said.

Luxa grinned with red - her own and others’ - on her teeth. “You’ve no notion of my stubbornness, valkyrie. That is a bet I will take.”

The valkyrie just rolled her eyes. “You’re going to die!” she yelled after Luxa, cupping her hands around her mouth as the raider queen-to-be moved on in the battlefield.

“Aye, valkyrie,” Luxa called back, “But not today!”

 

The raid on their village by another viking clan was more than just ill-planned, but ill-timed, too - it happened just as the boats full of fight-ready warriors were about to set out for distant lands and distant victims. That didn’t, of course, mean it was going all their way, or otherwise Luxa never would have seen the valkyrie again.

“You’re a fool as stubborn as an ass,” the valkyrie informed Luxa distastefully, “and twice as much of one as any that ever came out of a mare’s rear end.”

“I’m flattered,” Luxa said with a woozy grin. “Do you like my new axe? I had it made from the pieces they dug out of the lance _you_ were _so sure_ would kill me.”

The valkyrie grimaced. “Brat,” she said dispassionately. “it’s a very nice axe. Are we just going to ignore the way you seem to be bleeding to death?”

Luxa had been very happy to ignore the bone-deep slice under her right arm; with her mind back on it, it burned like nothing else. “Yes, we are doing that,” she said, already lunging back into the fray, albeit a lopsidedly as one side of her body responded faster than the other.

“I’m getting a little bored, here!” the valkyrie called. “Will you just give up already and let me do my job?”

“No!”

The valkyrie growled, exasperated. “Then what am I supposed to do?!” she howled.

“Just enjoy the show,” Luxa snarled, already battering at the enemy viking’s shield. “I’ve still got too much to prove for this nonsense.”

The valkyrie huffed, leaning back to watch. “Fine, then,” she said, “Guess I will.” The valkyrie paused and considered, eyes tracking the pale figure of the raider queen through the battle. “Not like the view is that bad any way,” she murmured thoughtfully.

 

Apparently, the Englishmen were a bit tired of being raided. Who’d have thought it? It was just bad luck that their tribe had showed up for raiding just when the English army-men were passing through the town. The fight was absolutely wild, and the night lit up by the burning houses and ships; Luxa thought giddily that they’d better hope plenty of them died in the battle, or else with two ships lost, the remaining three would be pretty cramped on the way home.

That could have been the bloodloss talking.

“What’s your name, valkyrie?” Luxa said the moment her battle-tide shadow appeared. She sat leaning back against a tree at the edge of the field, one hand clasped loosely to her stomach to try and staunch the red tide from the slice across her belly.

The valkyrie eyed that slice and made a “gross mortals” face. “It’s Gridgeirr,” she said.

Luxa raised a blood-spattered eyebrow. “‘Peace-spear’?” the raider queen asked. “What.... battlefield angel is named peace?”

Gridgeirr sneered and stuck out her tongue childishly. “What kind of viking is named Luxa, huh,” the dark valkyrie muttered.

“Thas none of your business,” Luxa said loftily, slurring as the blood loss dragged her down, “but is Roman.” Gridgeirr wrinkled her nose in disgust.

“Ugh. Romans,” she snorted, already sitting down in the mud next to Luxa. “Oh, well. You’ve done pretty good so far, but I guess third time’s the charm.”

Luxa waved her red-stained hand airly, releasing the gash across her abdomen momentarily to reveal the gleam of organs. “Oh, n-no, sorry, I won’ be dying today,” she said. “I’m only a… only few weeks away from being crowned. Can’t miss that. Dying’s jus...” she sucked in a rattling, blood-spattered breath, which sounded like a dying man’s, “...just. Too inconvenient”

Gridgeirr snorted and started giggling indelicately. “You’re hopeless,” she chuckled.

“Always will be,” Luxa breathed wetly, starting to almost smile.

 

The old coots were quite serious about not wanting a daughter on the throne. Poison wasn’t really a viking weapon, but it was an assassin’s one, and that had been their goal - to assassinate their new queen, while she wasn’t yet established. Worse, she’d known the face behind the poisoned blade that’d sunk deep in her shoulder. It had been her cousin, Henry. He’d always been vicious - as was proper for a viking warrior - but Luxa had never thought to see it turned on her.

She was actually surprised when Gridgeirr slipped from the shadows of the healing room and came to stand over her bed. “What are you doing here,” the errant queen grunted softly, with her eyes half-closed. “This isn’t a battlefield.”

“You’ve escaped me there thrice,” Gridgeirr reminded her, “So I thought I’d come by some other time.” Her voice was smooth and deep as always, quiet and wry, but an edge lay beneath it like gravel under silk. Luxa forced her eyes open a little more, enough to see the woman’s dark-skinned face. Gridgeirr had such lovely eyes, Luxa thought dizzily, dark and deep. It was a crime to obscure them by frowning. “Well, you are mistaken, I am afraid,” Luxa breathed out in an almost sing-song voice. “I will not being dying...today.”

Gridgeirr’s grin was a sunset - there and gone in the same moment. “Oh, really,” she said skeptically, with the tone of one playing along with a child, “And why is that?”

“Have to get Henry back, of course,” Luxa said, yawning, eyes slipping shut and mouth slipping into a smile. “Can’t let him get away with...killing me...th’ bastard...”

Gridgeirr had no response to that. But after a moment, Luxa heard the shuffling noise and scrape of a chair being pulled up and someone sitting down in it, and felt the creak as someone leaned their side against the mattress.

Fingers threaded their way through Luxa’s. A valkyrie’s hand was very soft and warm. “Hm,” Luxa hummed with a smile, eyes still closed. tightening her fingers around Gridgeirr’s as best she could. “I wouldn’t have thought.”

 

Gridgeirr entered to the musical sound of Luxa cursing up a storm worthy of a thunder deity.

“I’m not going to say anything,” Gridgeirr said with a grin, arms crossed over her chest.

Luxa’s head snapped up, and she fixed the valkyrie with a glare. “ _You had better not_ ,” she hissed. Gridgeirr didn’t reply, just looked at her and tried to snicker behind her hand subtly. Luxa gave her a look for good measures and just grumbled, turning her attention to tearing strips off her skirt for bindings around the stab wound in her midsection. “In the lung directly, too,” she muttered fussily.

They were alone in the bare yard, as the one who’d stabbed Luxa had taken one look at the blood, gone pale, and run for the healer. Gridgeirr, whistling, stuck her thumbs in her belt and started meandering about, examining the place. She didn’t get to come to training yards very often, after all. Not many people died during _practice_ fighting. Luxa, for her part, stayed on the ground fiddling with her makeshift bandages and growling a continuous stream of oaths and imprecations against the bloodline of anyone who might have begotten an incompetent swords-man or -woman in their life. It could have curled a sailor’s hair. Gridgeirr just snickered, more than used to it.

“Calm down, honestly,” she said, circling around to bump Luxa’s shoulder with her knee and crouch down next to her. “You’ve survived far worse.”

“Not by _accident_ ,” Luxa grimaced, appalled in the way that only came from a great and much offended dignity. “It is an insult. Even the idea that something so...so _stupid_ could bring death to _me_.”

Gridgeirr snorted - it was just so _Luxa_ \- and placing a hand on the dirt by Luxa’s hip for balance, the dark valkyrie curled forward over Luxa’s lap and caught her pale jaw with the other hand. Luxa gave her a look of disdain for her timing from only a few inches away, but leaned forward into the kiss anyway.

“You. The ferocious Luxa Judithdottir, Queen of the Raiders, _terror_ of a thousand men, who has defied death _three times_ ,” Gridgeirr mumbled against Luxa’s lips, playfully dramatic, “Who has _burned_ a _hundred cities_ , heir to the throne of her _father_...” Luxa laughed once, a low and quiet ‘heh’, already leaning back to attend to her bandaging. Gridgeirr rocked back on her heels (out of punching range) and grinned. “...laid low during _sword-fighting practice_.”

Gridgeirr had almost underestimated Luxa’s punching range. Thank Valhalla for good reflexes, in any case.

“Not,” Luxa gritted out, yanking the bandages tighter around her middle. “Just. _Yet._ ”

“So I’m guessing I’m not going to get to take you this time, either,” Gridgeirr mused, still grinning widely. Luxa snarled miserably, her face promising dire and terrible retribution.

“When I _get my hands_ on that trainee, he’s going to _wish_ you had.”

 

“So how’s married life?” Gridgeirr said with a wry grin. Luxa huffed tightly, smacking aside the Englishman’s blade and the pain in her side with equal ease, both born from long practice.

“Damn inconvenient,” she said, “And motherhood is twice so. I can never do as I like, and I haven’t seen you in years. Get over here.”

“Ooo, Luxa, ooo,” Gridgeirr teased, trotting over to help Luxa into a sheltered, hidden spot behind the curve of the ship’s hull. “I’m so _flattered_ , think of the children, what will the neighbors think, it just all looks so _scandalous_ , people might get the wrong idea.” Luxa raised an eyebrow and snorted, well aware of her valkyrie’s unfortunate (adorable) sarcasm habit, after all these decades.

“The _wrong_ idea?” Luxa said wryly. “And here I thought they’d be getting the right one. Well, if you are not interested, after all...”

The next several hours they spent hiding from the battle, and thoroughly disabusing themselves of that notion entirely.

“You are hopeless, you know that,” Luxa said at one point, when during a brief lull Gridgeirr double-checked to be sure Luxa’s makeshift bandages hadn’t gotten loose during their activities.

Gridgeirr only gave her a cheeky, faintly exasperated smile. “And I’m pretty sure I always will be.”

 

“Your daughters are gorgeous. Amazing fighters, too. I bet that one looks like me.”

“That’s not how that works, ‘geirr.”

“Well how do you know? It might.”

“You’re hopeless.”

“Always will be.”

  


“So this time for real, huh,” Gridgeirr said softly, sitting down on the cold, slushy ground next to Luxa’s hip.

Luxa, ancient, grey, well-wrinkled, and dying in the mud of foreign lands from a sword that’d gone straight through armor and sternum to pierce her heart, looked up at her and smiled, tears slipping out of the corners of her eyes. Weakly, she took the dark hand that was offered and held it against her chest for a moment, young and dark against well-wrinkled and pale. “It seems so.”

Gridgeirr smiled like there wasn’t pain in her eyes, eyes traveling to take in the damage. She laughed, once and watery, when she got to Luxa’s other hand. “And you still have that old axe,” she choked out, chuckling weakly.

Luxa coughed out a chuckle or two of her own. “Always kept it,” she wheezed. “Reminded me of you.”

The valkyrie’s smile grew deeper, and sadder. “It...it was a very good life, Luxa,” she said uncertainly, rocking back on her heels to start pulling Luxa to her feet. “Despite my best efforts, a very long one.”

Luxa started to rise gladly, this time. “I know.”

“I’m glad you got to have it.” Rising up.

“I know that, too.” On their feet now. Their hands were starting to match.

“... will. Will you miss it?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. My children I will miss, but they’ll manage,” Luxa said, standing whole and new and looking at Gridgeirr with clear eyes again. Death suited her; she glowed.

“Yeah,” Gridgeirr muttered, uncertain like she’d never felt before.

Luxa’s eyes softened, and by hand she still held clasped in between them, she pulled her lover into a lingering kiss. Leaning back, she smiled deeply. She’d never been good with words, as such, and never would be. She couldn’t find how to tell her lover not to feel guilty, that she should never feel guilty for doing what she’d been waiting for all these years, that it wasn’t and would never be her fault. But she could understand, and she could said this. “Speaking of times past,” Luxa said slowly, “...I understand that you still owe me a drink.”

Gridgeirr’s blink was quick. Her confusion, gradual. Her smile was slow. It was cautious. And Luxa had never seen anything more fiercely beautiful than that moment. “I do, don’t I,” Gridgeirr said, tugging Luxa - who easily went - closer and wrapping her free arm around Luxa’s waist. “I guess I can’t go back on my promises, then.” Luxa hooked her free arm around Gridgeirr’s neck. Their clasped right hands, weapon-hands, fingers interlaced and palm to palm, were pressed between them at collarbone-level, and Luxa fancied that through the backs of her fingertips pressed again Gridgeirr’s neck, she could feel her lover’s heartbeat.

“One drink in Valhalla,” the love of Luxa’s life - and death - said, with that wild, mischievous grin  and glee Luxa had always loved, “Coming right up.”


End file.
